Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

No one quite knows for certain how the play will unroll during the upcoming 2018 elections, but the cast of characters is slowly taking shape. Last April, Governor Dannel Malloy announced   he would not be running for a third term. Said Malloy, a rare emotional hitch in his voice, “I am today announcing that I will not seek a third term as governor. Instead, I will focus all my attention and energy – I will use all of my political capital from now through the end of 2018 – to continue implementing my administration's vision for a more sustainable and vibrant Connecticut economy." Malloy’s announcement opened a Pandora’s Box.  Lieutenant Governor Nancy Wyman, who rode shotgun on Governor Dannel Malloy’s coach for eight years, has only recently bowed out of the race. Wyman, it appears, has children and grandchildren whose company, she has belatedly said, she at long last would like to enjoy. Her bow-out, we are to understand, had nothing to do with Malloy’s failed...

Both Jon Pelto, now in the process of collecting signatures that would allow him to appear on the November general election ballot as a gubernatorial candidate, and Joe Visconti, who has declined to accept public funds to finance his campaign, likely would be put off by the term “fringe candidate” as applied to them. But there you are: A candidate for high office who has not been chosen by the Democratic or Republican Party nominating conventions and who, for strategic purposes, has decided to forgo a primary falls  necessarily into that categorical box. Campaign party reforms have made fringe candidacies not only possible but likely .